Planners Criticize Delray Office Proposal

October 25, 1985|By Neil Santaniello, Staff Writer

DELRAY BEACH — Shopping centers would serve the city better if they were built downtown instead of out west where a glut of commercial space already exists, a developer`s representative was told by members of the Planning and Zoning Board on Thursday.

Board members said they would find it difficult to approve Delray Town Center, an 88,000-square-foot shopping center and office complex proposed for a 10-acre parcel at Linton Boulevard and Military Trail, because it might detract from business downtown.

And it would run against the city`s land-use policies, they said.

The developer is seeking site-plan approval and an amendment to the city`s land-use plan to rezone the land from residential to commercial.

Board members refused to give preliminary approval for both but agreed with their staff to go ahead with a public hearing on the issue. A date for the hearing will be set soon.

The project must remain on hold until the city completes the first revision of its comprehensive land-use plan for 1986, said city Planning Director Robert Cohn. State law permits only two changes to a municipality`s land-use plan a year.

``It`s the wrong time (to seek approval),`` board member Phyllis Plume said. ``It`s just very premature at this time.``

For one thing, construction of specialty stores and a bank west of Interstate 95 would not aid the downtown revitalization effort, Cohn said.

A glut of shopping centers and competition for tenants often results in lower-priced leases and ``free rent giveaways`` during grand openings, added City Planner Murray Kaplan. If the developer offered such introductory cut- rate rentals, downtown merchants might be lured westward, he said.

``It would be an inducement for people on Federal Highway to move out,`` he said.

The project would have to be justified by a market study to show the need for another string of retail outlets in an area already plagued by ``a proliferation of retail space,`` Cohn told Billy Boose, an attorney for Anthony V. Pugliese, Henry Paper, Dominick Alfieri and Harvey Schultz, the developers.

Cohn said the project also would boost traffic in the area ``significantly.`` Boose countered it would not generate as much new traffic as expected.

The area`s ability to absorb office space is another concern, Cohn said. City planners currently want to concentrate new office space along four corridors: Congress Avenue, Federal Highway and the sections of Atlantic Avenue and Linton Boulevard east of I-95, he said.

Boose said a study of retail and office space in the area conducted by the developer came to the opposite conclusion. He offered the statistics and a report on the project to the board.

``You will be quite amazed at how statistics are supportive of this site,`` Boose said.

He emphasized the shopping center would be made up of up-scale specialty stores catering to the western, suburban area.

Countered Cohn: ``Our zoning code does not differentiate between specialty tenants and other (commercial) tenants.``

Kaplan said the proposal contained another shortcoming in that it is a strip mall without a large anchor store, and ``that is what we`re trying to avoid.``

He said any assessment of the need for more shopping centers in the city should take into account the two nearby ``super regional malls`` - Town Center Mall in Boca Raton and the new Boynton Beach Mall in Boynton Beach.